Part of my family is from Northern Ontario. One of my aunts who lived right next to the elementary school where she taught for years. Well, into her retirement, there was an incident where there had been a bear sow hanging around the school. It was a big bear year, in the sense that.
The bears were struggling to find enough food in the bush, so they were coming into town more and more frequently. The ministry was so overwhelmed with demand, that they had just left a pre-recording at their phone number with some really basic bear safe information, which was mostly “avoid them”.
Parents of the kids at the school were told to escort their children from their cars into the school building. When they were able to send someone, the wildlife officers were extremely new to the job, and even more new to the north.
The savvy old sow was canny and difficult to corral, but they finally caught her as she was guarding the base of a tree she’d gotten her two cubs to climb. The tranquilized mama bear, but they couldn’t get to the cubs, who had climbed extremely high in an old spruce. Their solution?
They took Mama bear to relocate her, but they left the two baby bears behind. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ My aunt was ready to spit nails. She was a person who rarely got angry, but when she did, she was a forced to be reckoned with. Bet that no matter how far they took mama, she tried to get back to the cubs.